Just Keep Running
by KateToast
Summary: Since birth, it seemed, she had always been on the run. Kate reflection, hints of Skate, Jate.


**A/N: **Kate reflection piece, from beginning to end.

**XXX**

Since birth, it seemed, she had always been on the run. Running away from home after her parents' divorce and her mother's return to a horrible drunk, running from a store after employing a little (or big) five-finger discount, running away from anyone who loved her.

But all of that had been small-time stuff compared to the murder (_murders_), which, yes, she _did_ commit, despite years of denial to anyone who accused her of it. The events that set her on a seemingly permanent sprint that didn't even end once she was stuck on a destructive, mystifying, terrifying island. She ran there, too, even though it seems ridiculous since she was on an _island_, because she was still the girl who couldn't take the pressure, couldn't accept the love, couldn't sit still and deal with what came at her.

At least the island gave her a reprieve from running from some of her major past sins, gave her an out (for a few months that felt like _years_) from the murder, the devastation, the disappointment that had followed her like a dark cloud. Now it was about running from entirely different evils: black smoke that had a total mind of its own, wild animals and even wilder weather, strange people who liked to kidnap and torture and experiment, and a host of other problems that continued to surprise and horrify. There were so many twists and turns in she and her fellow survivors' island story that she started to high-tail it from one thing and be confronted with another (and another and another…). She had to reinvent herself, learn to be brave, _lead_ people.

And at some point, without even realizing it, she was suddenly running not _from_ something, but always _to_ something, or some place, or someone. Her time in the breathtaking and dangerous jungle taught a maturity that had been lacking, gave her more purpose than she had ever experienced before in her life. She could _do_ something, she could _help_, _she_ could be the cause for good things instead of bad. Yes, the bad things continued to occur, but now she was on the effect side, not the cause, and it felt exhilarating and heroic and _exactly_ what she had been missing in her life.

When she got off the island, returned to the reality of what all of her running had wrought, she knew it was time to stop. Time to settle down. Take care of Aaron, allowing someone to rely on her for everything at every moment; she couldn't run with him, with the life she wanted him to have. If he couldn't have his actual mother, she was going to be the next best thing.

So she began taking responsibility, got a house with the Oceanic settlement money, went to court and faced the charges against her, checked in on Sawyer's daughter. And she finally made her choice, something that should have been so much more obvious to her all along: she wanted a life with Jack, not anyone else. He had been so instrumental as she changed her ways, and only second to her adopted son, he made her want to stay put, or at least stay with him.

("You're not running now," he had told her while she stitched him up, didn't even know his name, and she liked how it sounded when he said it even though she was petrified.)

She hadn't realized she was still running towards something, that they _all_ were, that it wasn't time to completely stay at a blissful standstill yet. The man she loved, the one she had always supported and stood behind, told her they had to return to that miserable island, and she had resisted.

She had not wanted to run, did not understand his obsession that had torn them apart. But she knew she had to, to find Aaron's real mother and bring her back to him. That damn maturity she had acquired over three years sat in the pit of her stomach, pushed her to leave the boy she considered her own, to go back to the place she first learned to be strong and proud and unafraid.

She was different upon her return, and she and everyone else knew it. She had grown up. She missed Aaron like crazy, searched the whole damn island to find Claire, continued to stand behind Jack no matter what his idea was. It seemed like he was the one running away now, until finally he discovered exactly what he had been looking for himself.

After saying her last desperate, emotional goodbye to this determined man she was so deeply in love with, after getting on a plane with the mother of the boy she had been raising just as she'd promised, after returning to reality once more, she figured it was now, finally, time to stop running.

So once again she rejoined normal society, reunited the Littleton family, avoided jail time with the help of her wealthier friends, tried to live a simpler life full of peaceful days and quiet moments. She watched Aaron grow up, shared cups of coffee with Claire, got lunches with James, marveled at how much Ji Yeon looked more and more like the perfect balance of Sun and Jin. She got an apartment, tried out different jobs, went on dates. For the most part, she was happy.

But there was something missing. In the back of her mind, in her _heart_, she felt that tug she used to feel before the island, the one that reminded her she shouldn't be here, she should be somewhere else, wherever that else may be. Though she fought it every day, a small part of her wanted to run again, except there was no where to go.

Or so she thought, for the longest time.

The cancer diagnosis had been a surprise, though it shouldn't have since it ran in the family. The doctors couldn't do much, and she knew she didn't have another big fight left in her at this point, after everything that had happened in her life. She hated having others take care of her, but Claire insisted she move into her home, especially since Aaron and Ji Yeon had purchased a place nearby. James stopped by more often, and even Desmond and Penny visited a few times. They all talked about the island and their time there more than they ever had since leaving all those years ago.

She got tired easier, and laughed whenever she remembered how much running she had done, across state borders, through fields, on beaches, in jungles.

As her condition worsened, she started to wake up groggy and disoriented because of the medicine and the pain, and thought she had been on the run again, or in a jail cell, or in a car. She told Claire of these dreams, the people she saw in them: Claire herself, and James, and Sayid, and Desmond. She must have sounded crazy.

She had faced her own mortality so many times in those days they spent on the island that when she realized her time was coming very soon, she did not feel fear so much as peace. She was not afraid to run to this.

Claire sits with her as her eyes close for what she knows is probably the final time; Aaron in the doorway with tears silently running down his face. She sees lights, tents, tables, Claire and Charlie and baby Aaron, and she _knows_ something, she just is not precisely sure what yet.

And then she sees him, sees Jack standing and looking around, and the light bulb fully bursts on.

"It's over," she says to him and she is so happy. She understands now. The pain forced on her by months of sickness is completely gone, practically forgotten already at the sight of him.

He looks just as he did when they said goodbye on the cliffs so long ago, more handsome if possible, and bemused. She remembers every instance she had seen him in a suit when they were dating, living together, engaged. "Excuse me?"

"The concert," she replies. "It's over." She can't keep the smile off her face but tries to hold back. He doesn't understand yet what she already does; he didn't have a chance to live a full life like she did and come to accept the inevitable.

(She was only able to because of him, and she is so grateful. "Tell me I'm gonna see you again," she had insisted, not _wanting_ to run, but his sacrifice gave them all another chance.)

They make small talk; he wonders why he knows her. She is bursting to explain, wants to run as fast as possible into his arms. Her dreams make so much sense, and she tells him of stealing his pen when Oceanic 815 landed. She wants to laugh with delight at the idea, the memory so clear to her. They landed.

(She knows they crashed, too, but dammit, the second time around, they _landed_.)

"No, that's not where you know me from," she agrees when he asks, and she swears his eyes glimmer with the recognition she craves as she steps closer, gently puts her palms on his cheeks.

"I've missed you so much," she tells him from the bottom of her heart, hoping the feelings behind the words encompass the years she spent without him, yearning for him, wishing things had been different, wishing that she hadn't spent so long running from him in the time _before_.

("I love you," she had told him reverently, too late, but that love meant everything to her for the rest of her life.)

It takes him a while, or maybe it is no time at all, she has lost track of it, but soon enough he remembers, and she sits with him in a room full of friends, feeling absolute joy, leaning against him, lacing their fingers.

She knows. This is where she has been running, the reason for the unexplainable feeling she had felt since leaving the island for the last time. She needed to be with him.

It was truly, officially, time to stop running. She was finally here.

**XXX**


End file.
